


Babes with Coats of Arms

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken | Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Genre: Alternate Universe- Fewer Dragons, Alternate Universe- Less Meta Sexism, Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Just. Extra Stuff, Light Angst, Lore - Freeform, Multi, Mutual Pining, My Name is Ryan and in My Spare Time I Write Novels, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, bonus chapters, dumb kids doing dumb things, gen - Freeform, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-04-24 19:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: Extra chapters, supports, unrelated vingettes, and other junk for 'Orphans, Kingdoms.' Updated whenever I happen to write extra chapters.





	1. Act 1: The League- Chapter 3x: Interesting Times

**Author's Note:**

> just fuck me up tbh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Permission to speak freely, your highness?”_
> 
> _“Granted.”_
> 
> _“You’re an idiot.”_
> 
> The night after Elice's encounter with the Red Dragoon, she gets herself some very good advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3: _Lefcandith Gauntlet:_ https://archiveofourown.org/works/13870752/chapters/32885358

Elice woke inside a building.  
  
Considering the fact that the last thing she remembered was being on a battlefield, this was quite a change. She was face-up but shrouded in the covers of a cot, quilted enough that except for the cold air on her face, she was sweltering. It was pitch-dark, so she could only assume she was indoors based on the sound of a hearth crackling, faint snoring from the other side of the small room, and voices muffled behind a door, and the dim orange light of embers inside a glass lantern set a safe distance from the bedside. Thunder rumbled outside the windows, but Elice didn’t hear any rain.  
  
Her head ached. As the fog around her consciousness cleared, so too did her memory of the events that led her there— facing down Macedon’s Red Dragoon, losing, being carried off the battlefield, retreating into the village, being poked and prodded and asked quite a few questions that she couldn’t really remember anymore. She’d either eaten or thrown up in that time, possibly both and hopefully more the former than the latter (but the bitter taste in her mouth didn’t bode well there), and somehow lost her shirt sometime after that. (Elice had spent an awful lot of time shirtless over the past two days, certainly more than she’d expected as the leader of an army.)  
  
She sat up without too much difficulty. The night’s chill against her bare skin made her shiver, but not enough to hide back inside the sweaty blanket-cocoon. Bruising in vibrant shades of purple and blue spread across her chest (and it wasn’t until looking at them that Elice realized how much breathing hurt), but although she felt pain from what used to be big gashes on her arm and her back, she also wasn’t bleeding to death, so that was a good sign. In fact, she was remarkably not-dead, which was a pleasant surprise considering the amount of Macedonian steel she’d taken directly to the chest.  
  
Maybe a direct charge to the fort hadn’t been the best idea, she thought belatedly. Her bruised ribs throbbed in agreement.  
  
Elice pushed her legs off the bed. Whoever had gotten rid of her shirt had left her trousers and thick socks alone, which she was glad for, since Elice liked to be aware of where her pants were at any given time. Her hair was folded into a loose plait tied with a string at the end, probably to keep it out of the way. No crown, she noticed, but she saw it set on top of a folded piece of clothing on the bedside table. She pushed her crown back into place first, more for her own security than any authority it granted her, and picked up the piece of clothing. It fell open into a faded red tunic made of thick Aurelian flannel, considerably warmer and sturdier than the Talys-made shirt she’d been wearing.  
  
She pulled on and buttoned up the front, despite the way her bruised chest protested. It was soft with wear against her skin, and granted her torso a welcome layer of protection against the night. She wondered whose it was, and decided that was a question for later.  
  
As she got closer to the door, the voices quieted. Elice pushed it open. A fire burned low in a hearth on the center of one wall, casting the rest of the room in orange. A teakettle sat on top of a grate over an open tome. Father Wrys snored in a rocking chair in the corner, his staff on his lap. Jagen and Malledeus sat at the rickety table around the open tome, and a redheaded woman in a white habit Elice had never seen before stood with her back to the door, setting a few teacups down on the table. She waved a hand and the words on the tome lit up in orange. Elice’s mind conjured the memory of her mother doing the same thing, two years in the past, only minutes before her death. She remembered the fragrance of the sweet breakfast tea, watching the water swirl and the sugar cubes melt, seeing steam rising from the spout of the kettle. Her mother always kept the flavor strong and the tea hot by setting a coaster on top.  She wondered what had happened to the teakettle, the grate, the cups. She imagined them smashed on the floor while the hot water ran into the channels between the stones in the floor, cooling as it mingled with her mother’s blood.  
  
Jagen’s chair scraped against the floorboards when he stood and saluted to her. Elice snapped herself out of her reverie.  
  
“Your highness,” he said. “It’s good to see you up and about. How’s your head?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Elice said, more to herself than to Jagen. “What happened?”  
  
“I’m told,” the redheaded woman said— Macedonian, now that she’d turned and Elice could see her features— “That you tried to fight a Macedonian dragoon in single combat. Sit down, please.”  
  
Elice sat. The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties, and she was short and plump, her cheeks pink and round like apples. She rolled up her sleeves and took Elice’s chin in her hands, tilting her face from side to side to check her over. “To be fair, she started it,” Elice said.  
  
Jagen sighed heavily. “Permission to speak freely, your highness?”  
  
“Granted.”  
  
“You’re an idiot.”  
  
Elice opened her mouth in offense, then closed it. “Alright, that’s fair.”  
  
Jagen rubbed his temples. “Princess Elice,” he began. “I’d very much like to _believe_ that you know the gravity of what we’re doing, and I am definitively certain that your heart is in the right place.”  
  
“How many fingers am I holding up, dear?” the Macedonian woman asked, holding up five fingers.  
  
“Does the thumb count as a finger?” Elice asked.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Then five.”  
  
“But,” Jagen continued. “I find it hard to believe such when you run off and pull ridiculous stunts like that! Believe it or not, for this campaign to succeed, you have to _live_ through it.”  
  
“I know, I know,” Elice grumbled. “So maybe it wasn’t my _best_ plan. But you heard what she said— she wanted _me_. I thought if I drew her attention, the rest of you could escape and I’d catch up later.”  
  
Jagen pinched the bridge of his nose, elbow resting on the table. He didn’t speak for quite some time. Malledeus spoke up in his place.  
  
“What ser Jagen _means_ ,” Malledeus said patiently. “Is that he was quite worried. We all were.”  
  
Trust Malledeus to make her feel bad for being reckless. Elice looked at the grain of the table. “She’d have slaughtered all of you,” she said. “We didn’t have time to make a new plan to account for the Dragoon and her pegasus knights. And I would’ve gotten away eventually.”  
  
“That’s not a risk we can take, your highness,” Malledeus insisted. “Not with you. You know that.”  
  
Elice bit her tongue. “But I’m fine,” she said. “We’re all alive, aren’t we?”  
  
“Yes,” Malledeus said uneasily. “We were forced to retreat, but Dolhr didn’t pursue.”  
  
“Then we can try again,” Elice said. “We’ll just have to account for the Dragoon.”  
  
“This isn’t about the Dragoon, your highness,” Jagen pressed. “This is about you running willy-nilly into combat with a half-baked idea for a plan without thinking of what happens if it fails, and getting seriously injured!”  
  
“What else was I going to do?” Elice demanded. A spike of pain shot through her head, making her wince and clutch her temple.  
  
“You need to think,” Jagen said, pressing his gloved fist to the table. The teakettle started to whistle long and low. “You can’t just blindly flail towards an inkling of a goal and consider it a success just because nobody died!”  
  
“This is bigger than any of us,” Malledeus added. “We can’t afford to keep taking risks like that.” Pain rose in Elice’s head with every word and every note higher the whistling teakettle grew. Then the whistle, higher, higher, drowned out the words, and the spike pressed into her head pressed further, further, until her vision went white.  
  
Elice clenched her fists. The tome erupted into flame, smashing the teakettle and blasting out superheated steam. Jagen and Malledeus jerked back. Elice grit her teeth as the pain faded. In his sleep, Father Wrys hiccuped, snorted, and went on sleeping.  
  
The Macedonian cleric was the first to recover. She clicked her tongue and put her hands on her hips. “Look at what the two of you did,” she scolded, like she was getting onto a pair of children that’d knocked over the cookie jar. “Leave the poor girl alone. She’s hurt and it’s been a rough few days.”  
  
She rubbed Elice’s shoulders. Elice didn’t have the willpower to react.  
  
Jagen cleared his throat. “Your—“  
  
“Don’t,” the cleric said firmly. “The both of you have made your points _abundantly_ clear, so you can continue arguing about it in the morning, after we’ve all had some rest.”  
  
Jagen frowned. “Sister Lena—“  
  
Sister Lena gave him a pointed look. Jagen shut up. The sky rumbled louder, the thunder getting closer. With the rising thunder, rain started to fall— slowly at first, then a trickle, then a downpour, hammering against the walls and the roof of the little inn. Elice wondered if the rain outside was warm and sloppy like Talys’s coastal storms, or if it stung one’s skin like rain in Altea.  
  
Jagen and Malledeus, at Sister Lena’s insistence, left them alone. Sister Lena sighed, pointing at the fire and bringing it back to life from the embers. Elice felt its warmth through the sleeves of her shirt.  
  
“I’m sorry about that,” Elice managed, though her voice sounded distant. “I don’t usually blow up tomes.” She hasn’t since she was small, anyway.  
  
Sister Lena pulled a chair up next to Elice. She took Elice's hands in her own. Elice hadn't even realized she'd been digging her nails into her palms until Sister Lena worked her thumbs into her fingers and pried them apart. Elice pressed her hands flat to her thighs. Her head hurt.  
  
“How are those bruises on your chest, dear?” Sister Lena asked gently. “Your breathing?”  
  
“Hurts,” Elice said honestly. “But I can still do it.”  
  
Sister Lena hummed. “Let’s get you a cup of tea,” she said. “Oh, no, that won’t do, my teapot’s broken. Wine?”  
  
Elice thought of wine (not wine) spilled on her skirts, dripping from a gash on her arm, pooling under her mother’s body, turning battlefield grass dark and slick. She shook her head.  
  
“Cocoa, then. I think that’s just what you need.”  
  
Elice nodded silently. She looked down at the borrowed flannel shirt. She’d buttoned it up wrong, and she could see blue and purple bruises like smears of watercolor paint under her skin, outlining her breastbone and ribcage in pale, tender flesh. She smelled butter melting as Sister Lena righted the little grate and set a mug on top, bringing the tome to life with a wave of her hand. The rain poured outside, and Father Wrys snored on.  
  
“I’m sorry about your teapot,” Elice said, her voice hollow.  
  
Sister Lena tutted and waved a hand, stirring in the sweet chocolate powder. “Teapots break. How’s your head?”  
  
“It hurts.” Elice was raised better than to pretend to be stoic to a doctor.  
  
“As expected. You’re lucky to be alive, you know.” Sister Lena released the magic in the tome and took the mug off the grate. It smelled thickly sweet and chocolatey, and it felt strange to be drinking it without Marth next to her, pouring sweetened cream into it until it turned a pale off-beige. He’d always had a sweet tooth. Elice smiled dimly at the memory, swirling the cocoa in her mug and taking a sip. It was thick and rich and warmed her to her core. Perfect.  
  
“So I’m told,” Elice replied, remembering she was expected to respond. Then she frowned. “I don’t know why that Dragoon didn’t just kill me,” she realized. “She certainly could’ve. But she turned her axe at the last second.”  
  
Sister Lena shook her head. “She didn’t want to kill you. Minerva’s a sweet girl— not meant for soldiery, if you ask me.”  
  
Elice frowned. “Sweet girl? That mountain of muscle and armor is a sweet girl? How do you know that?”  
  
“I was engaged to her brother,” Sister Lena said, which asked more questions than it answered. “In better days, you might’ve met as allies. Nasty business in Macedon, though.”  
  
“There’s nasty business everywhere,” Elice mumbled, nails tracing the carved flower patterns on the ceramic mug. “A country either stands in her truth and gets crushed, or succumbs to the Empire and twists her reasoning around to justify her king’s actions to her people.”  
  
“And what of you?” Sister Lena asked.  
  
Elice wasn’t sure how to answer. She stayed quiet, and took a sip of her cocoa.  
  
Sister Lena pushed a loose strand of Elice’s hair behind her ear. A memory of her mother doing the same flashed through Elice’s mind in an instant, and then the same hand growing cold and blue on the garrison floor. “You needn’t have an answer,” she said. “It’s an interesting question.”  
  
“It’s an interesting time we live in,” Elice replied. A thought occurred to her, and she chuckled mirthlessly, looking at her cocoa. “Now I know why they say that as a curse.”  
  
“Indeed it is.” Sister Lena’s smile looked amused, but no less kind. “I wouldn’t worry overmuch if I were you, Princess Elice. You’ve a heavy burden on your shoulders, but you don’t bear it alone.”  
  
Elice smiled hollowly. “I appreciate the sentiment, Sister, and I know I’m not going up against the entire Empire on my own,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I’m the one they all look to.”  
  
“Do you doubt yourself?” Sister Lena asked.  
  
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t, sometimes.”  
  
“Wise, but that isn’t what I asked.”  
  
Elice looked at her cocoa. “Yes,” she admitted. “There’s so much I don’t know. And no matter how many people pledge their blades and their lives to my cause, I still stand at the helm alone, with all of them trusting in the orders I give.”  
  
“I can only imagine the weight,” Sister Lena said. “But I ask you this, Princess Elice. Did you doubt when you went to distract the Red Dragoon so your people could rush past?”  
  
Elice frowned. “Of course not,” she said. “There’s no time for doubt in combat.”  
  
“Did you think it would work?”  
  
“I don’t know. I just had to do something.”  
  
Sister Lena nodded, and Elice got the feeling that Lena already knew the answer. And saying it aloud, Elice realized that she knew the answer, too. She let the moment of quiet realization linger, and finished her cocoa, letting the warmth spread to her fingertips  
  
Sister Lena patted her shoulder and took the empty mug from her hands. “You should rest,” she said. “I can heal broken bones, but those bruises have to heal themselves.”  
  
Elice nodded. “The battle will go better tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll make it so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4: _Rainfall:_ https://archiveofourown.org/works/13870752/chapters/33545310


	2. Birdbrain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> support conversation for gordin and ryan. set technically during chapter 10 of 'orphans, kingdoms,' but I haven't written that yet. enjoy some bonus content in the meantime, as i happen to write it.

In retrospect, maybe Gordin was a little overqualified for the darts game.  
  
That was kind of part of the fun of gambling, wasn’t it, that you gambled your own skills on something that was actually a challenge— a guaranteed win was fine and all, but Gordin didn’t gamble with money he couldn’t afford to lose, so where was the fun without the risk? But coin was coin, and they still had a pretty full purse of it even after Ryan bought a cookie the size of his head for ten gold. (You could buy an entire goat for ten gold in Altea.) He munched on it, getting melted chocolate all over his face, and pulled his hand out of Gordin’s every few bites to wipe the chocolate off his mouth. He was about halfway through, and frankly, it was impressive. Gordin’s teeth ached something awful if he tried to eat that much sugar all in one go.  
  
Ryan wiped the back of his hand across his chocolate-smeared cheeks and only succeeded in smearing it further. “What next, Gordy?” he asked. “S’there something you wanna do?”  
  
Gordin shrugged. “Up to you. I hear the petting zoo is popular.”  
  
Ryan made a face. “Petting zoos are for babies and weirdos who’ve never cleaned out a chicken coop. Come on, Gordy, there’s gotta be _something_ you wanna do!”  
  
“I mean, I _want_ to get a mug of ale and beat Barst at Blind Manakete again,” Gordin admitted. “But I can’t exactly bring you with me. A tavern back room is no place for kids.”  
  
“I’m not a kid!” Ryan protested. “I’m ten and a half!”  
  
“Yeah, if you count halves, you’re a kid.”  
  
Ryan tugged his hand away to fold his arms with a huff. “Am not. I’m a trainee soldier of Altea now, same as you.”  
  
Gordin sighed. “Gods, don’t remind me.”  
  
Ryan took another bite of his giant cookie. “Commander Jagen says I’ve got po-tential,” he said. “But I’ve still gotta grow some before I can join the ranks for real. ‘Cause I’m not tall enough to see through the archer’s slits in the battlements. Hey, can we sit down some? My feet hurt.”  
  
Gordin coughed. “Oh, yeah. Sure, buddy.”  
  
Ryan found an empty spot on a landscaping wall. He handed his cookie to Gordin and boosted himself up with a little wriggling, and took the cookie back when he was seated firmly on the brick. He continued munching his way through his abomination of sugar and chocolate while Gordin leaned on the wall with his elbows and propped one foot against the brick. They were out of the main flow of foot traffic, but they could still see festival-goers walking by. Gordin caught sight of Cain and Abel at a sausage cart deep in debate about something or other, and gave an informal two-fingered salute to ser Jagen when he walked by. Ryan bounced his heels off the wall, stuffing his face with sugar without a care in the world.  
  
There was no use in it, but Gordin wished he could stay that way.  
  
“Luke had the idea, when he gets his heavy armor,” Ryan piped up. “That he could charge into battle and I could shoot arrows from his shoulders. Like a really small ballista! Doesn’t that sound cool, Gordy?”  
  
A vivid image flashed across Gordin’s mind of his baby brother setting off on another child’s shoulders and immediately taking several arrows to the chest. He ripped off a chunk of Ryan’s cookie and stuffed it in his mouth to distract himself.  
  
“Yeah, sure, sounds cool,” Gordin shrugged. “’Til something shoots you clean off Luke’s shoulders.”  
  
Ryan shrugged. “I dunno. Luke says it needs re-finement.”  
  
Gordin nodded. “Hey, Turt,” he said. “You know that… you know this is a _war_ , right? It’s not a game.”  
  
“Yeah, and I’m fighting it right next to you,” Ryan replied. “‘Course it’s not a game. I know what I’m doing. We’ll fight the war together and then we’ll go home and be all together with ma an’ dad.”  
  
"Look, Turt, that's a real nice idea and all, and I want to see ma and dad again too, but," Gordin rubbed his temples. “ _Crivens_ , birdbrain, you know how much you worried ‘em running away like that? I’ve half a mind to drag you back to Altea, if Dolhr hadn’t closed all the borders.”  
  
Ryan stopped bouncing his heels on the wall. “Am I gonna be in trouble?”  
  
Gordin snorted. “Yeah, you’re gonna be cleaning the coops until you’re ser Jagen’s age and the whole town calls you Chicken Shit. What were you even thinking?”  
  
“I wanna help you!” Ryan protested. “You’re out here on the front doing real things that matter a-a-an’ fighting bad guys with the princess! I wanna help!”  
  
“It’s a _war_ , Ryan,” Gordin cut him off. “It’s not like your stories or games, okay? Real people get hurt and die on those battlefields, and the good guys don’t even always win, because— shit, half the time, we don’t even know if there _are_ good and bad guys, because it’s just politics and royal business and people doing what they think is right. It’s dangerous and scary and nobody even really understands why it happens, but it does, and we have to deal with it.”  
  
Ryan had gone very quiet. He stared at the cookie in his hands. He wasn’t crying, but he looked dangerously close.  
  
Gordin sighed. “Look, nobody’s gonna put you on the battlefield for another six years, at least. Don’t worry about it, okay, Turt? Leave all the fighting to me.”  
  
“But I’m not scared, Gordy,” Ryan said, looking back at Gordin. “You’re there. I don’t need to be scared.”  
  
If Gordin were more eloquent, or perhaps just better at putting feelings into words, he’d say something in response that got across what that meant to him. Except Gordin was not either of those things because he was a soldier and a chicken farmer before that, and neither of those groups are particularly known for their eloquence.  
  
He coughed. “Aw, crivens, buddy,” he managed. “I didn’t do anything special.”  
  
“That’s okay, we all have different strengths,” Ryan replied nonchalantly. “Leave the special stuff to me.” Whatever feelings of familial tenderness Gordin had felt immediately evaporated, replaced with the overwhelming urge to toss Ryan into a nearby hay cart. Such is the way little brothers are, whether soldiers or chicken farmers, wartime or peacetime.  
  
“Smartass,” Gordin muttered. Acting on impulse, he ripped off another hunk of Ryan’s cookie and ate it before Ryan could snatch it back.  
  
Ryan sputtered indignantly. “ _Gor_ -dy!” he whined. “That was _mine!”_  
  
“Well, _I_ bought it,” Gordin replied. “With money _I_ won, rightfully, in a fair game. It’s a tax.”  
  
Ryan stuffed what little remained of his cookie into his mouth and pouted. “You stink,” he decided. “Wart-faced hay-brained _stink_ brother.”  
  
“Works for me,” Gordin chuckled, leaning back against the wall. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Turt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this because i'm procrastinating writing the next chapter of the carpenter


	3. Fish Pie and Fealty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> support conversation for cain and abel. i'm still on that cain/abel mutual pining bs don't @ me

Cain hadn’t been to a festival since he was twelve years old. He’d always just been too busy— being a soldier was hard work, after all. At least that was what he’d told himself, when the reality was that he just didn’t want to go because he didn’t have any friends to go with, and wandering around festivals is no fun on your own.   
  
As it stood, it didn’t feel right that he was doing this. But Abel had said that he needed to get out of the barracks and have a bit of fun once in a while, to think about something _other_ than the war, because if he kept doing that, he’d go crazy. If anyone else had told Cain that, he would’ve politely but firmly declined. But it was Abel, and Cain’s common sense made a number of exceptions in Abel’s case.  
  
Alright, maybe Cain was a little in love with him. So what?  
  
“Cain, look here,” Abel nudged him. “They’ve got fish pies.”   
  
Cain snorted. “Probably nothing like Altean fish pies. Just an imitator.”   
  
“Won’t know ’til you try, aye?” Abel replied, giving Cain a boyish grin. He bought two with his own pocket change, despite Cain protesting that he can buy his own damned pie, and handed one to Cain, wrapped in a cheesecloth napkin. The layers of cloth insulated his hand from the hot pastry dough, leaving the cloth he touched gently warm instead of burning hot.   
  
Abel took a bite, then recoiled, clearly regretting his choice. “Ow! Godth! Too hot!”   
  
“You brought that on yourself,” Cain replied, smirking. Abel gave him a dirty look, choking down the bite of hot fish and fanning his tongue. Steam curled from the rest of the pie along with the smells of cod and cheese and mashed potatoes.   
  
“Not bad, though,” Abel admitted. “I mean, it burned off my taste buds, but what I did taste was just like how they make it in Altea.”   
  
Cain hummed, thumbing at the frayed edges of the napkin. “Yeah,” he said. “Just like Altea.”   
  
Abel frowned. Midday sunlight brought out the freckles on his face. Abel didn’t look like a soldier. He had a very plain kind of look about him— a common sort of face, one would say, with messy hair that grew faster than he could keep it trimmed and round cheeks and crooked buckteeth that poked over his lip when he wasn’t paying attention. He had kind eyes, and hands that belonged around a fishing pole or holding a hammer and nails, not wrapped in leather and steel and splattered with blood.

Unlike Cain, Abel had only joined the army at about thirteen, like a lot of army hopefuls— the ones that weren’t in Cain’s shoes, anyway; wards of the military, given over young in hopes of giving them a better life than they would’ve had otherwise. It was a rigid upbringing, but it was three good meals a day, an education, and a warm place to sleep. But that wasn’t the life Abel had come from— his parents were merchants from the countryside, he told Cain, and it was a good life, but he didn’t really want to stay in the same town his whole life. But he sent part of his wages home with his letters he wrote every month with no expectation of a reply, in handwriting that Cain had watched go from slow and unrefined to plain but orderly and practiced over the years Cain’s known him. Cain has often wondered what it would be like to write a letter and know someone would get it.   
  
Abel sat down on the steps to a church along the lakeshore, picking off bits of the crust from his fish pie and tossing them at the pigeons wandering the roads feeding on scraps from the festival-goers. The lake shone bright and blue, full of boats displaying colorful banners and streamers. If Cain looked only at the water and imagined the sounds of seagulls over the festive din, he could pretend he was back in Altea and nothing had gone wrong.   
  
Cain took a bite of his fish pie. It tasted like home.   
  
“Up to your standards?” Abel teased.   
  
Cain coughed. “S’alright, I suppose.”   
  
Abel nodded, satisfied, and chucked another piece of crust at the pigeons, who chased after it in a flurry of feathers. “Fish, cheese, potato, egg,” he said. “Can’t go wrong there.” He took a decisive bite of his pie to finish his sentence.   
  
“Mm.” Cain hummed. “I wouldn’t say it’s _quite_ authentic. It’s missing the prawns.”   
  
“Well, they don’t get prawns in lakes,” Abel replied. “Aw, well, so it goes. When the war’s all over, once we win and Altea’s free again, we can get real fish pies.”   
  
He spoke with such conviction that Cain wanted to believe him, but couldn’t quite make himself. Cain’s fish pie suddenly didn’t seem as appetizing. It was hard to think about hope for peacetime and food from home when his last look at Altea was from the deck of a ship as war horns blew and smoke rose in towers from the capital city. It had been over two years, and yet the loss still felt fresh, like a wound that no longer bled but still hasn’t healed. Maybe it never would.  
  
He didn’t realize how quiet he’d gotten until Abel nudged him. “You alright, Cain? Still with me?”  
  
Cain startled. “Yeah, yeah, just,” he cleared his throat. “Thinking. You know. Sorry.”   
  
Abel did know. “Nah, my fault,” he replied. “I know you don’t like being reminded. Shouldn’t have brought it up.”   
  
“You’d _think_ I’d be over it by now,” Cain muttered, combing his free hand back through his short hair. “It’s been two years.”   
  
“Hey, don’t say that,” Abel chided, his voice gentle. “I know that battle hit you hard.”   
  
Cain quieted. The rest of the group all knew about the battle at Hygarde Keep, about their king’s betrayal, about the massacre that followed, of which only Cain survived. But they hadn’t seen it. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen the king speared on the end of Jiol’s halberd, Longinus— the same Longinus that, crossed with Altea’s Falchion— decorated medals and flags and seals celebrating their alliance. They hadn’t seen the shock ripple through the ranks and order collapse as Gra’s soldiers turned on the Alteans standing next to them. They hadn’t seen the carnage, the heaps of bodies in blue and bronze all but covering the battlefield. They hadn’t been the only one alive out of sheer luck, only to find themselves staring down Longinus and the man that held it.  
  
He took a shaky breath. “When we find King Jiol,” he said, forcing his voice to steady. “I’m going to run my lance right through his throat.”   
  
“Well, you won’t see _me_ stopping you,” Abel snorted. “Bastard deserves it.”   
  
“And more,” Cain agreed. “If I could kill him twice, I would, and it still wouldn’t be enough.” He swallowed. “ _Everyone_ in blue on that battlefield died, Abel.”   
  
“Everyone but you,” Abel said gently.   
  
Cain’s fists clenched. It was times like this when Abel’s gentleness brought to light every emotion Cain could feel— anger, guilt, sorrow, and somewhere buried under all of that, or maybe woven throughout it, a painful, aching tug on his heart that reminded him why he really fought.   
  
He breathed. “Abel,” he said. “Can I trust you with a secret about that battle?”   
  
“Of course,” Abel promised. “You’re my best friend, Cain. You can trust me with anything that burdens you.”   
  
He offered Abel a weak smile before beginning. “I didn’t survive that battle out of skill,” he said. “It was all providence. In the chaos, I ran, searching for some orders, some remnant of hope that we might retaliate, but whatever I found collapsed before I could even respond. When King Jiol called the army back to behind him, off the battlefield, I was the only one standing.” He took a shaking, shuddering breath through his teeth. “King Jiol should’ve killed me then. He should’ve killed me when I ran towards him intending to run him through or die trying.”   
  
Abel was quiet. Cain wanted to stop talking, to leave it there, but he kept going, spilling the story as if Abel’s promise of trust had propped the floodgates open.   
  
He took another breath. “He disarmed me and knocked me down before I could even try,” he said. “And right then, I expected to die. I _saw_ Death. But it didn’t take me. It didn’t take me, because King Jiol looked at me and he said, _you, boy._ He said _I’m doing Altea one final kindness by letting you live._ He said _go back to your queen and your princess and your prince. Go back to your Altea. Go back and tell her people that Altea has lost, and that the might of Gra is what killed her. And then live with their ghosts hanging over your head.”_   
  
Cain pushed his hand through his hair and gripped it, tugging at his scalp if only to find some grasp on reality. “I don’t know why I did it,” he said. “I don’t know why. I should’ve stayed there and died with the rest. I should’ve—“   
  
“Hey, none of that,” Abel cut him off, gently but firmly. “You’re here now, under the banner of Princess Elice. Altea is one soldier stronger for it.”  
  
Cain breathed again. Again. Again.

“I know,” he said. “I know, and for that, I’d follow her highness to the ends of the world, no matter how long this war lasts.”  
  
Abel nodded. “Until there’s peace again,” he agreed.   
  
_Until you can go home and live the peaceful life you dream of,_ Cain thought. “Until we can get ourselves _real_ fish pies,” he said.   
  
Abel’s face broke into a grin. “Hear, hear!”   
  
He knocked his fish pie against Cain’s, which Cain had forgotten he was still holding, like it was a mug of ale and took a hearty bite. Cain, feeling raw and deflated but significantly lighter, followed suit.  
  
And what he didn’t know was that Abel made a vow to himself, too: _until you can come home with me._


	4. Cleanup Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> support group conversation for the fe12 trainee squad, luke, rody, cecile (cecil?? every rom seems to say it differently), and the twin krises. theyre such good dumb kids

They would all agree, later, that it was Luke’s fault.  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Luke protested, when this came to light. “Chris did it.”  
  
“He wouldn’t have if you hadn’t given him the idea,” Roderick pointed out. “You know the guy’s as dumb as a rock. He’d eat a shoe if you covered it in sauce and didn’t tell him what it was.”  
  
“Shoes _are_ edible,” Crystal said helpfully. “I’d eat one, if it came down to it.”  
  
Cecile grimaced. “Brings a new meaning to shoe leather steak. Where would you even start?”  
  
“I, uh, I think you boil it?” Chris guessed, scratching his head. “And then you drink the soup.”  
  
Crystal snorted. “Heh, foot soup.”  
  
“Foot soup,” Chris repeated. “Heh.”  
  
“Less talking, more working,” Jagen called. “The sooner this hall is clean, the sooner you can go.”  
  
“Yes, Commander Jagen,” the five of them chorused. The dining hall went quiet again as the group returned to what they were supposed to be doing— cleaning.  
  
“Still bullshit,” Luke mumbled as soon as Jagen turned his back. “Why is it always _my_ fault?”  
  
“Oh, put a sock in it, noodle brain,” Cecile jeered, chucking a broken watermelon rind at him. “It was your _idea_. Doesn’t matter that Chris pulled the lever.”  
  
Luke groaned. “It’s not like I _asked_ him to! I just said ‘I bet it’d be a sight if the cart spilled right now’ and then Chris the Knucklehead went and let all the fruit out.”  
  
“It was a sight, though,” Chris said.   
  
“Yeah, _real_ impressive,” Cecil drawled, leaning on her push mop. “Like seeing Prince Hardin covered in melon guts. We’re lucky he’s got a sense of humor.”  
  
“He’s probably why Jagen just told us to clean it all up instead of getting latrine duty again,” Rody pointed out.   
  
Everyone shuddered.  
  
“What do they _feed_ people here?” Luke muttered.  
  
“Well,” Rody guessed. He scooped up a smashed watermelon on the end of his mop. “Not this stuff.”  
  
Crystal took it off the end of the mop. She stared at it for a minute. Then she took a bite.   
  
“Huh,” she mused, spraying bits of watermelon as she spoke. “Not bad. Lil’ soapy, but not bad.”  
  
“Gimme a taste,” Chris said. Crystal gave him the piece of watermelon, which he bit into without hesitation.   
  
Cecile shook her head. “How in the world did the two of you survive past infancy?”  
  
Chris paused. “Dunno,” he decided, his mouth full of watermelon.   
  
“Grandpa always said that between us, we’ve got part of a brain,” Crystal guessed. “‘Cause if he’s got a third and I’ve got a third, then we’ve got half together. Basic sums.”  
  
Chris frowned. “Nah, it’d still be a third,” he said. “‘Cause you add one-third and one-third, and you got two on top and six on the bottom. But six eats two, so you get one-third again.”  
  
“One-third plus one-third does _not_ still equal one-third,” Rody protested. “Crivens, I knew you two were dumb, but this is just sad. Come on, guys, back me up.”  
  
Luke had his hand on his chin. “It’d be one-ninth,” he said. “Wait, are we doing times or plus?”  
  
“Chris is right, but only partially,” Cecile decided. “It’s one-sixth ‘cause you add the bottoms, not the tops.”  
  
Luke hummed uncertainly. “That doesn’t sound right.”  
  
Rody put his face in his hands. “ _Two_ -thirds, people,” he said. “One-third plus one-third is _two_ -thirds.”  
  
“Ohhhh.”  
  
Jagen looked back again, appraising the work they’d gotten done. “Not bad,” he admitted. “You’re making good progress. Now, are any of you willing to tell me who pulled the lever?”  
  
Everyone looked at each other.  
  
Cecile shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. Didn’t see.”  
  
“Me neither,” said Rody.  
  
“I didn’t,” said Chris.  
  
“Nor did I,” said Crystal.  
  
Jagen narrowed his eyes. “Luke?”  
  
Luke looked at the baseboards on the other side of the room. “Uh,” he said.  
  
“The sooner one of you tells me who was responsible for this mess, the sooner I let the rest of you go,” Jagen reminded them. “ _Someone_ did it. If the four of them didn’t see who did it, then it falls to you.”  
  
Luke looked up and shrugged. “I don’t know who did it either, sir,” he said.   
  
Jagen wasn’t satisfied. “One of you is lying,” he said. “When mischief happens, it’s usually Luke. Isn’t it, Luke?”  
  
“Nah, uh, no sir, it wasn’t Luke,” Rody chimed in. “I was standing next to him the whole time. We were tending to the horses.”  
  
“It’s true,” Cecile agreed. The twins grunted assent.   
  
Jagen sighed and scratched his head. “I’m never going to get an answer out of you five, am I? It seems you’ll all just have to clean the entire hall.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” everyone sighed.  
  
Jagen left them to it. Luke looked at Cecile.  
  
Cecile looked up. “What’re _you_ looking at, booger-breath?”  
  
“You didn’t rat me out,” Luke said.   
  
“Well, _duh_ ,” Cecile drawled. “‘Cause you didn’t do it. No sense in gettin’ in trouble for something you didn’t do.”  
  
“Even if, hypothetically, it was your idea, or your actions led to it happening one way or another,” Rody added. “Like hell I’m gonna tell Commander Jagen.”  
  
Luke grinned. “Aw, I knew you two cared.”  
  
Rody prodded him with his mop. “Don’t get used to it.”  
  
“I expect to be reimbursed for this,” Cecile said matter-of-factly. “Buy us a round of sausages at the fair tomorrow and we’ll call it even.”  
  
“Where in blazes am I gonna get the money for that?”  
  
“That’s not my problem.”  
  
“Maybe bust open some more of these melons. I bet that’ll work.”  
  
“Aw, shut up.”


	5. Act 1: The League- Chapter 14x: Lionheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What’s your point?”_
> 
> _“My point is,” Elice said gently, tying off the braid with a spare piece of string. “Doesn’t your neck ever get tired from bearing that weight?”_
> 
> Elice and Nyna find they have more in common than they thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 14: _Honor Among Travelers:_ https://archiveofourown.org/works/13870752/chapters/42614519

Elice has never really liked doing her own hair. She’s always found the upkeep long hair takes annoying, and brushing it so often gets boring and she hates having to do it so often, and it tangles easily and clogs bathroom drains and never quite falls where she wants it to, and she’s never thought it suited her, anyway. Had it been up to her, when she was younger and still lived in Altea in all the luxury the princess of a small country was granted, she would’ve chopped it all off the minute someone tried to compliment it and never looked back. She hated, most of all, the fact that it suddenly became one of her best features when she turned thirteen when before, hardly anybody cared. It was all how lovely she looked, how pretty, how so perfect for a princess, how happy she’d make a husband or wife someday. The only thing stopping her had been her mother. Her mother had beautiful hair, long and elegant and a lovely dark, glossy blue, almost black. Elice had heard people say how alike they looked for pretty much her entire life— a theoretical resemblance that she’d never really been able to see. As much as Elice did want to cut it all off, like most girls, she imitated what her mother did, and the image her mother modeled was of a serene, elegant queen for whom beauty meant being an island of peace in a tempestuous world of politics and intrigue. Elice had always been more tomboyish than, probably, her parents would have liked for the heir of Altea, but the example her mother set was, for a long time, all Elice wanted to live up to.  
  
But, all told, it was just hair. It’s not like it wouldn’t grow back.  
  
She picked out twigs and bits of dried grass that’d accumulated in Nyna’s hair from the past few days of marching. It fell all the way down her back in loose waves, even without the molding from the tight braids, far longer than Elice would’ve been able to stay sane dealing with, even before Altea’s fall. It was strange seeing Nyna without it done somehow. She looked younger— more accurately, she looked like she actually _was_ Elice’s age rather than like some ageless goddess for whom all of humanity was a very interactive ant farm.  
  
“How are you holding up?” Elice asked, working the brush through Nyna’s hair a strand at a time.  
  
“I’m fine,” Nyna replied. “It’s good to be home, such as it is.”  
  
“I can imagine it’s strange to see it from this point of view,” Elice said. “I know it’ll be weird going back to Altea, just thinking about how things have changed. I mean, this month three years ago, I was sitting there with my father talking about where I planned to go to university, and now I’m leading an army. He _did_ tell me that I may end up doing that, but I think he’d figured that it would’ve come _after_ I was actually, you know. Crowned.”  
  
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Nyna hummed. “I didn’t think that I would ever need to take up that burden, and yet fate saw fit to decree otherwise.”  
  
“You were the youngest, right?” Elice remembered.  
  
“I was,” Nyna replied. “My elder sister was to become queen after our father either died or retired and, should something befall Anette, the crown would go to Dorian. I never imagined in my younger years that it'd fall to me, especially not so quickly.”  
  
Elice nodded. “I wouldn't have guessed. You always seem so… composed, I guess would be the word. Like you were meant to lead, to rule. Like you’ve got the strength of a whole country backing you up.”  
  
“Such is how ruling is, Princess Elice,” Nyna replied. “Archanea’s people rally to the Emperor’s word because the Emperor is the one who plans, writes, and enforces the laws of the land that, in a perfect world, guarantee their safety and stability. It’s not a job I take lightly.”  
  
“I would never accuse you of doing so.” Elice started to fold Nyna’s hair into a single braid, loose enough to sleep in. “But it’s as you said— heavy is the head that wears the crown, no matter whose crown it is or when it’s given. It’s why heirs are prepared their whole lives for it.”  
  
“What’s your point?”  
  
“My point is,” Elice said gently, tying off the braid with a spare piece of string. “Doesn’t your neck ever get tired from bearing that weight?”  
  
Nyna went quiet. The silence was stifling in the small space of the little two-person tent. Nyna moved away from Elice, turning around to face her, her expression unreadable. She was quiet for long enough that Elice thought she might’ve overstepped, but Nyna spoke again before she could apologize.  
  
“For my people,” she said. “I would carry any burden, no matter how heavy.”  
  
“And I’d never doubt for a second that you could,” Elice replied. “But I’m Archanea’s Champion, aren’t I? Your burdens are mine, too.”  
  
Nyna shook her head, but her eyes were fond. “Perhaps we’re more alike than we think, Princess Elice,” she said. “Archanea is lucky to have you as her Champion.”  
  
“Not just Archanea,” Elice said. “I’m _your_ Champion too, Princess Nyna.” She took one of Nyna’s hands and raised it to her lips, grinning roguishly. Nyna pulled it away, but Elice saw her crack a smile.  
  
“Well, then,” Nyna decided. “I suppose I ought to count myself lucky, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the chapter title is from 'king and lionheart,' yes i know everyone uses it for lady/knight ships, no i will not stop ever


End file.
